From The Ashes
by Sleydo
Summary: 1 month after GOW 1. With the Locust retreated to lick their wounds, the COG looks to rebuilding humanity. Dom looks to finding his wife. And Marcus discovers that the experiments on him in Jacinto Penitentiary have left something behind... R/R?
1. Door to Door Salesmen

He was a vast hulking brute of a man, seven feet tall and with a face that could have been carved out of stone—age lines and taut skin pulled thinly over hard-edged muscles and bone. His eyes were a pitiless grey, and when he looked at someone it was easy for them to imagine he was painting a target reticle over their face.

It didn't help Stannis' ability to answer the man's questions that he was a Coation of Ordered Governments soldier, either. They weren't as bad as Locust, that was for certain, at least they were _human_, but still—when the Locusts had come up out of their holes and taken whole cities prisoner, the COG hadn't flinched; they'd struck back. They'd sent lasfire down from orbiting satellites and wiped out every major human population centre themselves, just to deny the Locust the resources they could have used against the COG. When the COG had retreated to the rocky Jacincto Plateau, the last safe haven from the Locust, and built their massive forttress-city, hundreds of thousands of civilians had been left abandoned to the Locust across the continent and even more overseas. And the Locusts didn't need slaves, they needed _food._ Stannis had heard the COG hadn't tried to help, hadn't seemed to care. It said a lot for the validity of this rumor that the Human-Locust War—the Last Stand, some of the Stranded called it—had been going for 14 years now, and Stannis hadn't seen one COG even come near his settlement for 10. The COG looked after its own, up on the Jacincto Plateau, but if it had the resources to take care of anyone else it wasn't showing it.

14 years, and now the COG was back. Stannis wondered what had done it.

"I think... ah, hell, I don't even know."

The man glared at him, and shifted his armored bulk slightly. The datapad he was cradling in one hand was made for a normally-sized man's, and against the COG's steroid-enhanced musculature it looked like a knotted bandanna covering the top of his head wavered a bit in the wind. "Guess," he spat.

The COG next to him stirred. He was nearly as tall as his friend and sported a small silver earring on his left lobe. For all that the bigger one seemed to be the leader, he'd spoken twice as much. "Look, we don't need exact numbers here, but if we're going to relocate you guys to Jacincto we need at least a general idea of the layout of the land around here. Satellite's given us major roads to use, some nice ruins to stay close to if we need to duck and cover from Locust, but if there're some bigger Stranded settlements around that we can use to resupply at along the way, so much the better. You've got to have some idea."

"We don't talk much." Stannis shrugged. "We helped each other out, back 7 or 8 years ago, but that's over now. The Locust—" He felt his voice break a little. _C'mon man, keep it together..._"We found out they could track supply shipments, radio. They came up and..." Stannis felt a wave of embarassment as his voice died in his throat, and he was left standing speechless in front of the two men. The fractionally-smaller one nodded. Bandanna-COG said nothing, but his eyes narrowed a little and for a moment Stannis thought he was going to crush the datapad into pieces. It seemed to take him a few heartbeats to get his composure back.

"Nowhere? You're saying there's nobody else around here? How far? How many kilometers out from here, in any direction, can you tell me that there's _nothing_?"

Stannis tried to say, and found he couldn't. The smaller one said, "Marcus, stand down."

"Dom. Do you even want a safe exit strategy, or just a Locust attack while we're babysitting these fuckers all the way to Jacincto?" 'Marcus' waited for another few seconds, and when he was sure Dom was finished he said, coldly, "How. Far."

Stannis swallowed. "Te-ten kilometers. That's as far as we could get, might still be a couple settlements about that far out, northeast and north of here, but I don't know for certain. There were other settlements, closer, but they all—" Stannis tried again. "Our settlement's radio was down, so they didn't know we were here, but they found the others and—"

"We get it," said Marcus, quietly. He turned away. "That's all we need for now. Get everyone around here together at noon next week. We'll bring in three APC's, load you guys in, and make for Jacincto."

"Th-thank you."

Marcus walked away, back to the matte black APC the COG soldiers had come in on. Dom stayed, and moved forward a little, conspiratorially. "Uh... Listen, there's not much chance of this, but...I'm looking for someone. Wondering if you've seen her."

Stannis watched him, warily, as the six-and-a-half foot killing machine that could match a Locust Grub blow for blow brought out a tattered wallet from the depths of his powered armor. He flicked it open. A tattered bill of money, useless these days for everything except making fires, floated out and Dom didn't bother to pick it up. Instead, fingers clumsy inside the heavy gauntlets, Dom pulled a small mangled photograph out and showed it to him.

She was beautiful, Stannis admitted to himself. Blonde hair that floated down to her shoulders, framing an open, smiling face. Dom cradled the photograph in two hands and looked at him, and Stannis saw a shade of desperation in his eyes.

"Her name's Marcia. Have you seen her? Someone like her? She'll be older, now." Stannis shook his head. "Different name? Hair a different color...?"

"No, man. Look." Stannis groped for words. "My wife, some of my kids, were over in Yanjan, that was one of the places close by before the Locust...The radio went down and I never... I like to think they're still alive, you know? I get it."

Dom put the photo back, face hardening. "She's not dead. I swear she's out there, she's fucking out there _somewhere_—" His hands were tightening into fists, and as he began to crush the wallet he looked down in alarm and the hate melted away again, thawing him. "Thanks. Anyway. I know she wasn't around here, now. Thanks. We'll be back in a week, get you guys out of here."

"We'll be ready," said Stannis. Dom walked away, to where Marcus was waiting. Stannis stood where he was and watched until Dom and Marcus' APC turned a corner in the ruined cityscape and vanished, all out of a strange quasi-respect for the military that had managed to survive in him for 14 years despite everything that had happened. When they were gone he picked up the bill Dom had left.

Noon in a week. Couldn't forget. But in the meantime they all needed to survive, and even fuel for fire was getting hard to find. Stannis clutched the bill close, and began to pick his way back along the ruins toward the Stranded settlement.


	2. On the road

Wherever they were, it had used to be a city. While he sat in the turret on overwatch duty, Dom wondered about what the occupants had called it, and where they could have gone. The few plausible answers he could think of were sobering.

The thoroughfares the APC picked its way through must have been magnificent once. They were probably broad and flat, cement facades hiding the complex arteries of water, electrical, and emulsion piping that must have existed to keep the city fed. There had probably been statues on every intersection, heroes of the COG every one, generals and peacemakers that had led the way into the golden age. With so few problems left for the government to solve—peace everywhere under a unified government, international population either stable or dropping, poverty at virtually zero, the city itself almost definitely planned out to a military precision which left everything most citizens needed in walking distance—there would have been few users for the road, and little usage in general. The only time it would have seen gridlock was during a parade.

There were no statues left now, and the road was cracked and broken. The buildings around it were shattered, and left in enough of a ruin that Marcus averaged about one turn every thirty meters in order to avoid a debris pile.

Whatever majesty the city had managed to scrounge for itself over the years, Dom had to invent for himself.

They drove on for hours, Marcus at the wheel, Dom on turret, both of them continuously tense. The other half of Delta squad had been assigned the same duty as they had been, and were in another APC several miles away. If the Locust came down on them now, they would be fighting at half-strength surrounded by cover that any enemy could exploit.

They were nearly out of the city, entering wide-open countryside, when Marcus spoke.

"Find anything?"

Dom shook himself out of his trance. "Nah."

"Sorry to hear it."

"Yeah. Me too."

Long pause, for nearly minutes. Finally Marcus said, "You'll find her, Dom."

Dominic Santiago couldn't think of anything to say to that.

Private Augustus Cole, 'Cole Train' to his Thrashball fans, was sixty point one kilometers away from all of this, but sitting in a turret identical to Dom's. The COG mass-produced everything nowadays and all of the APCs looked exactly the same to any casual observer. The driver down below Cole, a Private Damon Baird, was not a casual observer. Upon Baird's seeing the APC for the first time, Cole had watched Baird shove the access panels open and mess around with the APC systems concealed inside, to the immediate rage of the duty mechanic ten meters away. Baird then performed complicated modifications to machinery Cole wasn't able to name at gunpoint, and eventually got into a yelling match with the duty mechanic that had lasted ten minutes, and had only stopped when Cole got between them and told the mechanic, "Come on, man, we're _Delta_! If it wasn't for us you'd be Locust bait by now, so suck it up and go screw someone else's day."

Even a month after they'd finished that business with the resonator, that line still worked. And every time Cole thought of the anguished look on the mechanic's face, torn between hero worship and keeping his machines safe, it couldn't help but make Cole laugh raucously for half an hour or so. Being a hero had its perks.

"Hey. Wake up, big guy. I don't want to get my brains splattered all over this cabin just because you couldn't keep your eyes open."

"I'm watching, jackass."

"Good. Stay like that." Cole could hear Baird key the microphone. Using it was a huge risk, and would attract Grubs by the dozen, but for all that intel had said there would be Stranded hanging around here, neither of them could see any and they needed to make contact somehow. Cole swore under his breath.

"I hate this crap," he told Baird.

"Hey! Eyes peeled, mouth shut. Stay frosty on me." For all his bravado, Cole knew Baird was just as pissed off about the idea as he was. No matter how badly the COG had been pushed into a corner, there had to be a better way to get fresh blood into Jacincto than recruiting the Stranded while the Locust were pulled back. Not that Cole could think of one, but still.

Then—

_Ohshit._

"Baird! Movement! Grubs nine o' clock!"

Baird flicked the mike off and then swore so loudly it competed with the roar of the growling APC engine anyway. The treads ground against the ramshackle road beneath them 

and threw up clouds of rocky shrapnel that blurred as they streaked across Cole's vision. He squinted a little, entirely out of reflex—the turret covering put a combination of steel and impact-resistant glass between him and the hostile outside world. He felt his hands flick off the safeties off the turret cannons with practised ease, and he swung the turret left, getting a bead.

Three Grubs. Antipersonnel armaments, no anti-tank weapons. Detached from it all, Cole looked them over and thought, _Huh. They don't look hostile. Just kind of... lost. _

He opened up. The Troika raked over the building the Grubs were moving through and smashed it to pieces. The first two didn't move—for all their freakish strength and toughness, Grubs always seemed to have a slower reaction time than humans—and the fire tore them to pieces. The last one on the end took a dive and ended up behind a large, ornate buttress that caved into pieces when Cole swept over it. The Locust went with it.

Cole rotated the turret cautiously, counter to the direction that Baird was turning the APC. Nothing else around. He was putting the safeties back on just as Baird had finished turning the APC, so that the somewhat more vulnerable rear was parked up against a tall wall of debris, big enough to entirely shield it.

"Think we're good, man."

Baird sighed in relief, bravado gone in the adrenaline release. "Glad to hear that. Nice shooting Cole."

"Hey, it's easy for me—aiming this thing? Just like throwing passes back in the league."

"Bullshit."

"No, baby, I'm serious!"

"Bull. Shit."

Cole gave up taunting him. "You gonna use that mike yet?"

"Uh. Right." There was a pause, then a brief squawk of feedback that made Cole wince. Another pause, as the APC's egress hatch opened up, and then more silence as Baird debated what to say. Then, finally, Baird started talking.

"All right then. Uh... Calling all Stranded. Listen up, all right?" The microphone in the driver's cabin was connected to amps jury-rigged into the APC, in the passenger's cabin so that they could be secure during transit and audible when the driver wanted them to be. Additionally, the mike was wired into a radio transmitter that sent out signals on all of the 

frequencies that the COG mechanics had felt were easy to build equipment for—frequencies the Stranded probably used.

"I know we've all had some tough times, and I know how there's some hard feelings all around. Fighting the Locust's been tough, and sometimes we haven't gotten along. We've tried to kill you, and you've tried to kill us, and all that shit. What I'm saying is—I mean, _I _haven't tried to kill you guys, or not intentionally, I'm not saying that I ever... I mean, if there was a firefight I never shot first, you know? I always made sure it was you guys and—shit, I uh, don't mean it like that, okay? I meant, uh..."

He trailed off. Cole tried not to snigger.

"Let me try this again. 14 years ago we all got thrown into the meat grinder. We've been hanging on by our finger tips for all that time, and we've been losing, too. They've just kept on coming and there wasn't anything we could do to stop them. That's changed, okay. _We _changed it. Us. The COG. Me. We went and tore the heart out of those Locust bastards and now we've got a chance to pull ourselves back together. Those guys'll be back, and we've got to be stronger. We need you with us. I don't know what you've already heard, but here's the deal. You make contact, we'll take you to Jacincto. Life's nearly as hard there as it is out here—whatever job you've got, they'll seriously work the shit out of you, and it's seriously likely that if you've got kids they'll be requested for Gear conditioning—oh, shit. I mean—uh. Crap. Look, your kids _can _refuse, okay? It's frowned upon, what with how we've got our balls to the wall here against the Locust, but they can always... I mean.

"Look, we're around if you guys want to make contact. Or if you're taking fire and you need some support. Whatever. We'll be here for you. Look for the only APC for miles around, 's got a huge skull stamped on it.

"...Uh. Yeah." Baird sat there for a second, trying to think of some kind of inspiring epithet to put on the back of it, and gave up. He flicked the mike back off.

"Aw, Baird, you missed your calling baby. You should've been a diplomat."

"Fuck you."

"Wow," said Dom. "Just wow."

Marcus managed to stop laughing, and then realized to his surprise that he didn't remember laughing in years. Maybe it was a sign of the times. He hoped so.

"We're not getting any Stranded signals in yet, but maybe they're still trying to get to their radios."

"Inspiring speech like that? They'd better be."

Marcus nearly started laughing again, but stopped himself. The moment you lost your edge you got killed, or worse. For a moment vague memories of the prison and what they'd done to him stirred, but he bit it back down.

_Focus. Here._

"Dom, you got anything?"

He could almost hear the Gear's good humor ratcheting back down to a cold calm. "No, man. Nothing."

"Good."

"_If you have found something, then by all means, begin the attack. It is well past time that we return to our war."_

Marcus froze. The voice wasn't Dom's. It was feminine, silken, beautiful, instilling levels of adulation and trust in him that he knew he didn't have, and above it all it felt like it had bypassed his ears and entered straight into his brain. He knew what was going on here, though. This had happened to him before. Twice. Once just before Kim had been killed, and again just after he'd killed General RAAM.

He knew who—_what_—he was hearing.

_"By all means, my children, let our human prey know fear."_ And then, something new and worse happened. For a second his perception slipped, and suddenly he was running hard through the empty, shattered ruins, glad of the shadows that armored him from the hateful sun above, his brothers at his side, saliva at the thought of engaging the humans again dripping down into his mouth, and the boundless, terrible rage that powered him uncurling in his chest. His lips split and shouted a taunt, loud enough for the pitiful creatures below to hear.

"Dust... To... Dust!"

And then, exactly as suddenly, he was Sergeant Marcus Fenix of Delta Squad again. The APC's radio link crackled.

"Lissen, y'all. You wanna help us out, do you? Well, we're about six klicks north-northwest of your south APC and we're in a heap of shite. You wanna help, come on down. Just follow the gunfire."


	3. Newfound friends

            Note from the author: Sorry to break up the flow if you're actually getting into this at all, but I wanted to just make some things clear. First of all, the new main character from the passage below isn't my character, he's been announced (in PC gamer magazine) as a character in GOW2. That, and a couple relatively small spoilers about his place in the GOW universe (which may well end up getting included in this story), are all I know about him. If you don't want GOW2 to be revealed for you even THAT much (which I can understand), you should stop reading now. Consider yourself warned.

            Also, JRB, sorry but Stannis won't be back until maybe the epilogue, if there is one. Although I did put in Dizzy since I liked your advice enough to try it out. Look everyone! A passage from the perspective of a non-Gear! Ain't that cool...

Dizzy had known the convoy would be trouble from the moment he'd joined up with it. Hadn't stopped him, of course. Few things did. Besides, they'd been a pitiful lot—hollow-eyed kids and starving wrecks of adults that were to normal people what sketches were to photos—and he'd known from the second he'd set eyes on them that they would never make it to Jacinto without help.

            Besides, if he hadn't at least tried to help them out he wouldn't have been able to look at his own kids without feeling guilty afterwards.

            He'd thought for a while that his intuition had been wrong—a whole month of traveling had gone by, with nothing so much as a single Grub—and at the time he'd decided that maybe he'd finally struck it lucky. The convoy of refugees he was shepherding were fed and even content at times, Dizzy's kids were happy with having others their own age to hang around, Dizzy's wife was happy the kids were happy, and so Dizzy was happy. At times, like on the good days when the Stranded settlements they'd passed by had done more than just pass them a few morsels of food or ammo out of pity but had actually joined the convoy, he'd even entertained the prospect that God had finally had enough of what the Locust had done to his green earth and gone down there himself to sort them out.  Life had been good.

            It was times like this, he supposed, that reality liked to sneak up behind you and then kick you as hard as it could in the sack.

            The kids' wailing down below was only drowned out occasionally by the gunfire, but Dizzy supposed that, at least, was a blessing of sorts. Gorram Locust snipers! The first hint they'd had that something was finally amiss was when the 16-year-old he'd had on sentry duty had collapsed with an entry wound the size of an egg in his chest. The fact that they'd managed to get all of the invalids in cover without any more casualties was something Dizzy attributed to the last of the good fortune that had stayed with them for the last month; everyone that wasn't able to fight was safely hidden belowdecks of the huge mining truck that had got the convoy this far. Thing was, the truck's steering assembly wasn't belowdecks; it was fully exposed on the top deck, with only a windowed cabin enclosure for cover. Driving the truck out of the ambush was suicide, and nobody was quite ready to die just yet.

            Such was the chain of events that had left about twenty good men cowering behind what scant bulkheads the truck—after some thought, Dizzy had named her 'Betsy'—had to offer, and Dizzy himself hiding beneath the thin shell of steel in the driving cabin, unable to even rise in the knowledge that the moment the Locust saw where he was, there would be a slew of bullets punching straight through his hiding place and ending his days right there.

            So instead he watched as his eldest, Darron, rose out of his cover with a practised care, pulled up the long-barrelled rifle that Dizzy had spent so many evenings helping him modify, drew a bead and fired. He was back in cover in under a second, and the Locust sniper bullets pounded his cover like rain. Dizzy had to smile at that. "Headshot?" he yelled, grinning over the tumult.

            "'Course, Pa. You know me." Darron slouched down a little, making sure none of his body was exposed. "Not like I can get to try't twice, y'know."

            Dizzy nodded. Now that the Locust knew there was a man behind that cover, they'd be watching. Darron would be sitting the rest of the firefight out.

            "All right then. Uh... Calling all Stranded. Listen up, all right?"

            Dizzy turned to the radio. Surprise must have been written all over his face, because Darron started chuckling.

            "Hey, it sounds like he's talking to you, Pa."

            "I know we've all had some tough times..."

            Dizzy listened to the message, his astonishment steadily growing. Either someone was having some serious yuks at Dizzy's expense, or the COG was here. Now. With tank support. Dizzy glanced up at the aged radar system on the cabin console and was astonished to note the two green dots marking the APCs next to his position. He'd already seen them, had been puzzling over them for most of the day, but he'd written them off as the first inevitable equipment malfunctions of the journey, the initial signs of how old Betsy really was.

            "Ah, girl," Dizzy murmured, "I'm so sorry I doubted ya." Maybe his luck was still up and about.

After the Gear had finished his convoluted, slightly-offensive speech, Dizzy just stared at nothing, pondering the distance to the cabin's radio and how fast the Locust would shoot him down if he tried to make a go for it. Even his eldest was silent. As if to make the decision for him, Dizzy felt the truck under him begin to shake, and the rest of the earth with it. He'd seen enough Locust emergence holes to know what that meant. And the ground was really shaking, so there were at least three holes coming up, and probably more. The Locust had finally decided to up and swallow Dizzy's little convoy whole. _Ah hell,_ he thought, _there's nothing else for it. Besides, if I go down swingin', I know the wife'll understand. _

            "Oi!" Dizzy yelled. "Give 'em hell for a couple seconds, boyos! Take their ambush and shove it up their poxy—"

            As if by magic, the whole of the deck lit up in muzzle flashes. Dizzy nodded, satisfied, and dove the meter-and-a-half across the cabin. His hand yanked the radio mike off its stand as he went by and his forearm was in place to take the brunt of the impact against the other side of the cabin. His body fell hard against the deck and he had just enough sense left to curl himself up back into cover. For a second or so he didn't even breathe.

            Nothing. No ominous _ptoink_ as a bullet shattered his idyll and slew him. No cries of warning from his buddies. Just him, and a ringing in his ears... and the radio in his hand.

            He pulled it to his mouth. Later, when he looked back on it all, he would wonder why he hadn't felt some kind of... Ah, even then he couldn't name what he should have felt. Touch of destiny, or something. Maybe a little surge of excitement from opening up a whole new door into the future blindfolded and sticking his foot through to see what was behind it.

            "Lissen,  y'all. You wanna help us out, do you? Well, we're about six klicks north-northwest of your south APC and we're in a heap of shite. You wanna help, come on down. Just follow the gunfire."

            "Goddammit, Marcus!" Dom could only hold on to the turret controls as the whole of the APC shuddered and flew across the rough terrain. "The APC isn't built for this shit!"

            Marcus probably didn't even hear him. The APC's turret enclosure swung into his jaw again, and this time Dom was positive he felt a tooth go. He pulled himself away and shoved his arms against either side of the turret, holding himself erect while the world bounced and crashed. He swore to himself, and felt a surprisingly sudden ache for his wife.

            _God, Marcia...I'll be with you soon. I'll find you... or I'll die fighting this stupid war. Either way._

            He pulled himself back together, found the commlink to the driver, and flicked it open. "Marcus! _Marcus! _Get a grip, man! _Slow down!_"

            The APC only slowed marginally, and only for a few seconds. Afterwards the world was still rushing forward to meet him, but Marcus had taken a hand off the wheel and opened the comm so he could talk back. "Dom, those people are fucked if we can't get there three seconds ago. Grow some balls and shut up."

            "The APC—"

            "No shit. I heard the first time anyway. You think that matters right now? We don't go this fast anyway, they're dead. We crash, or we go too slow, they're dead. Shut up so I can concentrate."

            Dom shut up. Life went on for another few seconds. Then the comm clicked on again.

            "One other thing," said Marcus. He sounded a little hesitant, for some reason. "See that taller building in the distance? The one that looks like it used to have another twenty feet of spire attached to it?"

            "Uh huh."

            "There're two smaller buildings next to it. Blast them down. Nevermind if you see Locust in them, just get those first. There's emergence holes underneath."

            "Damn, how could you know that?"

            Pause.

            "They were rumbling a couple seconds ago. You couldn't see?"

            "No way, man."

            "Oh." The comm clicked off again, leaving Dom alone to feel puzzled at how Marcus had known.

            By the time Baird managed to drive his APC back to the Stranded distress call, it was all over. There were a couple dead people lying around, but as far as he could see the casualties had been light for the human side. Locust bodies, on the other hand, littered the ground in the no-man's-land between where the strike force had unearthed itself and the Stranded group. By the looks of things, the Locusts had begun with sniper sentries in one building, and when they'd spotted the convoy, Locust reinforcements had tunnelled up beneath the two buildings adjacent, assuming the structures would cover their insertion. Evidently, they had been wrong. Debris and torn pieces of cement littered the ground where the buildings used to stand, hiding the Locusts that had been fatally entombed inside only somewhat. _Chalk one up for the COG, _Baird thought. Sergeant Fenix's APC was already parked next to the mining truck the Stranded seemed to be using as a makeshift home and transport.

            The truck. It was magnificent. By the looks of things it was about fifty tonnes worth of machinery, a massive steel block that made his heart sing in his chest just to look at. It was cube-shaped mostly, with four massive treads along the bottom that were about where wheels would be if the beauty had been a car, with heavy cowlings over each of them to hide the complex system that drove them and protected them from grime. Vertical ladders hung precariously on either side of the truck, in front of the treads. It was about five stories tall and, by the looks of things, it wasn't all machinery. Baird could see faces, mostly those of children, peeking out from small square windows chiseled in lines across the top two stories of the truck. Cranes and other derelict mining equipment dotted the top deck, and a driver's cabin sprouted out of the front, the inclined front making it almost look like a bird's beaked head, angled forward at something.

            "Yeap, she's a beaut, ain't she?" Out of his peripheral vision, Baird saw a man almost as heavily tattooed as Dominic turn from his conversation with Fenix and walk over to him to place an amiable arm round his shoulder. The man's huge cowboy hat bumped up against Baird's temple. "Name's Dizzy, fella, and her—" He gestured, taking in the vista of the entire truck—"name's Betsy. Her and me 'ave been keeping each other alive for, oh, must be a good five years now. I found her in an old mining town a ways away from here, all alone. Hard to think anyone'd abandon a sweet girl like this." The man turned to him and pulled his sunglasses off. "I seen the way you've been looking at her, young fella. I'm guessing you'd be the mechanically inclined type, someone who'd get a real kick out of making sure this purty girl's still running properly. You do think she's purty, right?"

            Normally Baird had some kind of obscenity-laden rant for situations like this. 'Get your damn hands off of me, you filthy Stranded bastard' was favorite, or maybe just a simple invitation to fuck off. But for some reason what came out of his mouth was "Yes, sir. She sure is."

            The man winked. "'Spect you'd like to take a poke round inside her, then, eh?"

            "...Uh..."

            "Baird! Over here, now. Command's got orders for us."

            Not ungratefully, Baird firmly pushed Dizzy back and headed for the rest of Delta. Cole was already there, grinning like an idiot. "Damn Baird, you see the crazy shit Dom and Marcus pulled the way in here? They pulled down _two _buildings on those Locust suckers! Four emergence holes, and those scaled bastards never even saw what hit em!"

            Marcus threw a calculating glance at Cole as he continued to gloat, then apparently decided to just talk right over him. "Listen. I just got off the radio with Anya about this. Dizzy says this convoy's got about sixty people total in it, with twenty men able-bodied and another twenty-six children under thirteen."

            The news had the desired effect. Twenty men that could take up jobs in Jacinto immediately, with no hospitalization to rid them of the starvation and infection symptoms that usually plagued Stranded, and twenty-six others that were young enough to be eligible for proper Gear conditioning? Even Cole shut up for a while. Dom said, "Damn. Marcus... that's more than we figured we'd get in a month."

            "Exactly. Think about it. Everyone that would have joined up with us around here, and then some... they're already going to be here, in the convoy. So our orders have been changed. Here on in, we've got to get this truck to Jacinto. There's us, two more Gear squads recruiting nearby that can come in and help us out if we feel like the Locust are really pushing, and a squadron of five King Raven choppers that'll be doing trips between us and Jacinto for the next couple days, ferrying the invalids out for us."

            "Why not just do everyone like that?" Baird asked, but Cole was already nodding in understanding.

            "They want the truck too, don't they?"

            Marcus nodded, approving. "Damn right they want the truck. We can't mine under Jacinto because the Locust will exploit that to bypass our defenses. We can't mine outside Jacinto because the Locust will pour out of the ground and kill us. So we're stuck scrounging parts from Locust-made weaponry and ruined cities. This truck—"

            "Betsy," Baird supplied, deadpan. Cole started laughing. Marcus glared a little for breaking his flow but said nothing about it. "Betsy," he continued, with a nod to Baird, "is one of the biggest processed-metal finds that they can drive back to Jacinto this year."

            "They're going to take her apart for scrap? Dizzy isn't going to like that."

            "Dizzy'll get used to it if he wants his kids to grow up in the last city left in the world." Marcus folded his arms across his chest. "The COG just hit the jackpot here, and we know it. We're keeping these people safe with every scrap of resources we've got to spare."


	4. Unforeseen Consequences

                "Well, I've got to hand it to you," said Baird. He held up an arm and Dizzy obligingly pulled him out of where he'd been standing chest-deep in Betsy's mechanized innards. "There's not a lot of Stranded-owned machines I've seen work after years of use. No offense." He pushed up his electromag goggles; when he was working with Betsy they were essential in figuring out how the control circuitry worked, but talking to Dizzy they'd only be a distraction.

                "Hey, none taken pal. I've seen enough wrecks lying around to know what you mean." Dizzy folded his arms. "Tell the truth I struck it lucky with the old girl. She's got solar panels along her top deck and her engines're so rugged you can run them off whiskey. And she's older than she looks—I'd bet she was already ancient when I found her. Like I said, she's a beaut." He gestured back down at the mire of tangled wiring and drive systems. "Any of that you'll be needing to fix?"

                "Eh, not really. Like you said man, she's pretty rugged. There's a couple bits that could do with replacing, but she'll hold up fine until we reach Jacinto, and it's not like I have the parts on me."

                "Fair enough," said Dizzy. The cowboy hat waggled as he nodded. "The old girl's waited this long, I figure she can wait a while more, yeah?"

                Baird shifted uncomfortably. He didn't relish telling Dizzy about Betsy's fate, but not telling him now seemed like treachery for some reason. "Actually, the COG are going to need Betsy, Dizzy."

                He could sense Dizzy's frown behind the sunglasses. "Hnh. Well, okay. I guess I can see why. She's got plenty of life in her, and I'd be selfish to keep her around just for myself when I don't have any use for her. What're they gonna use her for? Missions, like with your tanks?"

                _God, he's going to hate my guts for this._ "Parts," managed Baird.

                It took about a two seconds for what he'd said to sink in fully. Then Dizzy went apoplectic. "They're gonna tear her up? They're going to tear up _my Betsy?_"

                Baird backed up a little. "We need her for this, man. You got no idea—"

                "_This truck saved our lives! Saved my life!_" A vein was pulsing hard on Dizzy's forehead. "First time I found her was on a grocery trip for my third son, he was just a babe then, wife still weak, I had to get all of the food for them, and the Locust and Kryll were after me, and the only reason I'm talking to you now is 'cause I hid in Betsy! Right _here_! Right where you're standing! You fucking cityslicker COG fascist piece of shit, yougot _no_ idea how much Betsy is to me! She saved me! Saved my whole fucking famil—"

                "Listen. Listen to me." Baird was utterly surprised when the man stopped for a second, and he took the opportunity that he'd been given. "I _get it_. You think I want to see Betsy taken apart? But we're all pushed into a corner here and all our choices are bad, man, all of them." Dizzy opened his mouth, but Baird plowed on. "How many families are going to die because you wouldn't let us do this? She'll save lives this way. And let me tell you, man, up in Jacinto you'll get everything you've ever needed out here, but there's a price. You've got to be ready to give it all up for the COG. Any day. Any second. They won't let your family in if you get pissed about Betsy. Is a truck worth your family? My family? Whoever's that ends up paying the price because we missed out on what this old girl could do for us?"

                Baird realized how much he'd just said, and how as a speech it had almost sounded passable, and he shut up in amazement. Dizzy stared at nothing for what seemed like a long time, and then pushed his sunglasses up to make sure they hid his eyes. "You're right, fella," he said softly, voice broken. "Even after all this, she's still just a truck."

                With sudden force, the realization hit Baird that he had just condemned Betsy to the scrap heap. "Yeah. Just a truck," echoed Baird, but his heart wasn't in it. He turned away and walked back up to the passenger decks, to let Dizzy grieve alone.

                The voices of his children echoed in his mind, in infinite harmony. A perfect choir that stretched on for nearly infinite length.

                Well, not entirely perfect. There were discordances. Other voices, those not of his children, broke the symmetry again and again in an unending blasphemy of what he'd made. It had been worse before, when there had been more of them. Far worse compared to now, when their voices had dwindled to a low hum that at times he could go so far as to ignore.

                Someday, he knew with absolute certainty, they would vanish entirely.

                He stirred himself to a greater wakefulness, stretching his consciousness to the limits of his perceptions. He took in the vast hatcheries that remained in blissful darkness at first, and then extended himself along his tunnels and byways, through every one of the magnificent creations he'd made that strode through them. At last he pushed upwards, drawing as many of those lingering near the baleful surface as was possible. The number was far fewer than the number of children he knew he had.

There were so many of them now, so many that he could no longer remain in full contact with all of them. He knew that there were many that had died alone, bereft of his contact. He knew it had become necessary now, yet the mere thought of the occurance filled him with sorrow and anger. Some things should not be.

As his perception stretched to its limits, he sensed something... _new. _Different. The voice was in harmony with his children, and yet utterly alien. Utterly different. It was not something he had made himself. Somehow, an outsider had entered his choir.

He felt enraged, terrified. Violated, most of all. He cast himself through each of his children in turn, searching for the source of the voice, but it eluded him again and again. His rage and terror grew with each false step, until finally he gave in and abandoned the pursuit. Despondent at the failure, he drew in on himself, pulling his sensory input from his children one by one until he was at last left alone. Their voices faded, but suddenly he realized the alien song still remained. There was no control he could exert over it, and it would not stop.

His growing rage quickly turned to horror as he realized the alien was _him_.

Marcus Fenix jacknifed awake, breathing hard and fast. The realization that the experience was probably only a bad dream didn't do much to calm his nerves. He slowed his breathing to calm himself down and leaned his head back against the wall.

"Nightmares, huh."

Marcus opened an eye. Dom was curled up in the opposite corner of the room, watching him. He tried to iron his voice into a flat calm. "Yeah."

                When the planning and discussion of strategy between the Gears and the Stranded leadership—which, as far as Marcus could tell, consisted of Dizzy, his two oldest sons, and a couple of other men that Dizzy could trust—had  ended, Delta had gone in separate ways. Cole had immediately been mobbed for autographs by the refugees that still remembered him from his Thrashball-playing days. Baird had gone off to check Betsy's systems. That had left Marcus and Dom, who had both decided that an eighteen-hour day spent fighting Locust was a long-enough day for them and had turned in early. It had still been early evening when they'd done so, which was significantly out of rhythm with the Stranded's sleeping schedule, but Marcus had found out rather early in his career that it paid to break the body's sleep cycle as thoroughly as possible, and learn to be able to sleep whenever necessary. You never knew just when you'd be fighting, so you never knew just when you might need some shuteye. Darron, after some pestering, had directed them to a bunkroom that they could share with the twenty-odd militia that had been protecting the convoy. The Stranded they shared the room with were still out—probably getting drunk, maybe trying to get Cole's autograph. Marcus honestly didn't care what.

                He realized that Dom was still eyeing him, maybe a little suspiciously. "What?"

                The other Gear blinked, then appeared to realize he was staring and looked away. "Nothing. I just don't remember you getting nightmares about this shit, man."

                "Gets to all of us eventually."

                "True that."

                Time passed. Marcus shut his eyes and then realized he didn't want to face what might be hiding in the back of his head. Dom didn't appear to be able to sleep either, he noticed. "Nightmares for you too, huh?"

                "Nearly every night now, man." Dom fidgeted. "I know they meant well, but I wish they hadn't taken us off duty for two weeks as a reward for that op. Going back into tour from that screwed me up a little. I got used to all that luxury."

                "Yeah. Regular food, sleeping without armor on, all that."

                "Exactly. By the time you're used to it you're back on duty."

                Marcus grinned a little at that, but the thoughts of how his own mind had been imposed over the Locust Queen's quelled the urge to laugh. Dom leaned forward a little, only his silhouette visible in the near-darkness. "Listen. I know it's probably nothing, but I'm curious. How in hell did you know about those Locust holes? I don't buy the whole 'I saw the buildings rumble' crap, they were too far off for that. How'd you know, man?"

                Marcus said nothing, the wheels in his head spinning fast. He could trust Dom, but with this? And why worry Dom by telling him? Besides, it might not be real and he could just be going pathetically insane, like some of the Gears he'd known—

                _Wrong_, he knew_._ He'd predicted where the Locust would be. He'd felt the Hive Queen's mind. This was utterly, disturbingly real. And as his mind churned over the dream, he realized that now, he might not be the only one that knew about what he could do.

                The Locust Queen. She'd reacted to him. She'd felt him, somehow.

                _Fuck. _That changed things. If this...whatever it was... was a two-way street, he needed to be prepared for the consequences when the Locust started barging into his own brain.

                He needed Dom's help to do that.

                "Dom," said Marcus. "I need you to listen carefully to everything I'm about to say. Don't say it's bullshit, don't argue, don't reason. Just listen to me."

                "Sure, man. You can trust me."

                _Shit, I hope so. _Choosing his words carefully, Marcus began to explain. He started with the prison, and the genetic/psychological experiments they'd been doing. He talked about watching three of his fellow inmates driven mad and speaking gibberish until the doctors had finally put them out of their misery. He talked about being given the same drugs that they'd been given and then being holed up in solitary confinement, under observation with wires burrowed into his skull, for weeks at a time. He talked about how nothing of consequence had occurred to him, and how they'd put him back in his cell to rot until Delta had shown up to free him again at last.

                "It did have an effect, though. I don't know why, but for me it took years for the drugs to change me. Now, I can hear her," Marcus finished. "She's in my head."

                Dom frowned. "Who?"

                "That goddamned bitch. The Locust Queen. Their Hive Mind. Sometimes when she..." Marcus fought for the words. "...Opens herself up to co-ordinate an attack, I slip in. Just for a couple of seconds. I saw the emergence holes in Locust eyes." He leaned back against the wall, remembering, and suddenly burst out laughing. "Fuck, when you collapsed that hole on the Grubs? For a couple seconds I was under the debris pile. I felt like I _was _one of those pieces of shit, and I could feel myself dying." He began to say more, but after he finished speaking he glanced up at Dom. Just for a second, but long enough.

                He could tell that Dominic Santiago, possibly the only person in the world that he trusted anymore, thought he was legitimately bat-shit crazy.

                _Ah, shit, _Marcus thought. He shut his mouth and waited for Dom to start in on him. Telling him that he was wrong, telling him he could get checked out in the psych wards when they got back to Jacinto, maybe even telling him he was relieved of his command. But instead, Dom just lowered his head as if in prayer and said nothing for around a minute. Finally he lifted his head and said, "You couldn't have known about the holes otherwise. You can't be nuts. You either actually believe this or you're bullshitting me." Dom shook his head slowly. "Marcus. Just tell me everything you've said is a sick joke, man. Please just fucking say it."

                "I... No. It's no joke. It's real. I can hear her, Dom."

                Another lengthy pause. For a moment Marcus thought Dom had abandoned the conversation entirely. Finally Dom said, "No joke."

                "No. Sorry." His instincts were telling him that Dom would probably need a little while to mull all of this over and fit it into his understanding of the universe at large, but if Marcus didn't get this over with he could lose his nerve. "I need a favor. If this starts getting bad, if you think this is driving me nuts like it did for the other inmates, or if it starts seeming like the Locust are in my head instead of the other way around and they're influencing my decisions... Dom, I'll need you to shoot me."

                Dom nodded, believing he understood. "Shoot to wound, chain you to a bulkhead and drag you to Jacinto?"

                "No, Dom. Shoot to kill. Here." Marcus made his right hand into the shape of a gun and put it against his temple. "Don't fuck around. I'm a Sergeant, I know what the higher-ups look like, I command a Gear squad, I could lead them to this convoy. The stakes are too high. Fire until you see brains."

                "Shit, man...I..."

                "That was an order, Dom. Can you carry it out?"

                "God help you, man... Yeah. Yeah. I'll fucking do it."


	5. Shafted

By the time sunrise came, the convoy was already on the move. But to Dominic at least, it did nothing to diminish its glory. A warm golden sun with no cloud cover to shade it, rising and framing the mountains on the horizen and washing the cityscape in light. The angle of the sun against the mountains was such that the shattered wrecks of buildings were shaded and hidden, reducing them to shapes that the mind approximated to trees, the exposed steel frameworks becoming branches, reaching. _A world without people,_ Dom thought suddenly, and shivered a little.

He was still on the mining truck, as they'd all decided last night that in the event of an attack it could definitely use the fire support. Baird and Cole had each taken one APC with a refugee each on turret duty. Dizzy had assured them that both were crack shots, but Dom was utterly sure that Baird at least, and probably Cole as well, would have utterly no confidence in their accuracy. Dom was only sure that he didn't want to find out either way. Yesterday had been an interesting day, but he didn't need any more adrenaline highs. Maybe it was the recent vacation talking, but he preferred the quiet now. And the Locust seemed happy enough to lie low for the present. Maybe the quiet would last for longer than usual.

"They'll be here soon," said Marcus, as though reading his thoughts, from behind him. Dom whirled reflexively at the unexpected sound, and in the half-second after he realized it was Marcus he expected his friend to be grinning a little at managing to sneak up on him like that. But instead Marcus' face was drawn absolutely taut and his eyes were watching the skyline to the west. "Nemacyst coming in from over there, supporting the ground ambush. They'll collapse some buildings onto the highway to force us to stop and they'll have Troikas on the buildings on either side of us to sweeten the deal. They're trying to find something near our route they can collapse just by digging underneath right now." Marcus' voice softened to a whisper, and his eyes took on a haunted look. "I can _feel_ them."

Dom glanced around alarmedly, making sure none of the Stranded were close enough to hear. Then he stepped forward and pointedly put a hand on the holster of his sidearm. "You need any help there, Sergeant?"

The _Sergeant _seemed to snap him out of it. Marcus lost the faraway look and his gaze bounced back to Dom, glaring. "Not yet. But be ready, dammit. I could lose to this any second for all I know."

"All right then. We know what's coming. What's the plan, man?"

"The APCs are fast enough to evade an ambush. You and I go out there, we drive until I get a fix on where the Locust are. Then we dodge the ambush and keep going. Meanwhile, Cole'll go out with a Stranded as a gunner and plot out a good route for us that takes us around the highway."

Dom frowned. "What'll we tell the others when they ask why we're doing this?"

Marcus rubbed his eye. "Dunno. Tell 'em I got a bad feeling about this, I guess. Want to make sure there's nothing out there. When we find something, we tell 'em, and then they change course to the alternate route Cole finds." He stiffened abruptly. "Hang on. Command's on the line." Marcus put a finger up against his earpiece. "Anya, Delta squad. Come in."

"Reading you, Delta. More orders for you. Hoffman says as long as you're in the area you might as well pick up the Stranded colony you found earlier. Have them join the convoy, then continue as is. Also, expect the first round of three Ravens in at 1300—"

"Belay that, command. Pickup-zone is hot, repeat, PZ is hot."

There was a pause on the line as Anya relayed the information to someone else. Then she was back on. "Give me numbers, Delta."

"Unknown. Medium-size Locust presence. They're still in the area. I, uh... I saw a Nemacyst come up in the distance earlier. Plus, we're in something big enough they can track us. We know they're still here—they must be biding their time."

"Acknowledged." Anya sounded dubious—Nemacyst rarely entered the air prior to an ambush; they would too obviously give away the Locust position. Not to mention that Nemacyst meant Seeders, which could block radio traffic at will. If the Seeders weren't, then the Locust were trying to be stealthy, which implied some pretty heavy-duty background planning and the suggestion that they were still deploying, which in turn decreased the likelihood of Nemacyst being in the air yet even further. At least she hadn't decided Marcus was wrong... yet.

"Listen, Delta—we've got a couple King Ravens outfitted for stealth recon on ops nearby. They could swoop around and get to you by 1400. Noise wouldn't carry over a couple blocks. Can you recommend a safe entry vector?"

"Recommend easterly approach, but even then, run silent."

"Acknowledged. Command out."

Dom shifted nervously. "You keep pulling intel out of your ass like that, and there'll be more than a couple awkward questions for you when we finally get back to Jacinto."

"Worth it if we save some lives."

"Yeah."

Marcus frowned. "That shit about the Stranded colony just screwed this plan good, though. The truck's too slow to detour all that way, so we'll need both APCs, and possibly more than one trip. You got the stats on you?"

Dom pulled out the notes he'd taken on the colony. "Says here forty people at most. I think we can stuff about ten into the back of the APCs, so two trips."

"Right. I figure the convoy can handle itself for this long. Let's get Cole and Baird and get moving."

Stannis watched the APCs thread their way towards the settlement, the COG insignia now seeming almost touchingly familiar to him. It was strange how things worked out, he mused. If the Gears had called in to inform them of their approach even fifteen minutes earlier than they had, he would have probably been able to convince the rest of the colony not to surrender to the raiders; that help was coming for them soon enough. As it was...

The radio next to him crackled as the one two of the thugs had referred to as 'Franklin' came back on the line. "Hey yo, they coming in yet?"

Stannis brought the radio to his lips, almost feeling guilty enough about the idea of betraying their would-be rescuers to forget the guns that were pointed at the heads of his citymates just a few hundred meters away. "Yeah. They're here."

"Cool. I tell you what—we like the shit we take off them enough, maybe we won't harm you fuckin' COG-lovers after." Static-filled laughter from the other side. "You got any names for me, man?"

"Uh... I remember one was called Dom."

The radio fell silent for a second and Stannis suddenly felt the atmosphere grow tense. "Well, shit," the radio said finally. "Never saw that one coming. Santiago's here, huh. All right, this I gotta see."

Stannis worked up the courage to ask, "What's going to happen with us?"

"Hey now. You play along, man, we'll let you live... maybe."

Stannis' instructions sent them to what used to be a city square surrounded by what were probably expensive high-rise apartment complexes, although the war had smashed away everything but a few shells of steel rebar, stretching towards the sky like fingers. The Stranded themselves were all huddled in the center of the square, unmoving. The first thing Marcus noticed was that the body language of the group was all wrong—far too tense, and some of the younger children looked openly terrified. He flipped the mike switch to talk to Dom, and as an afterthought set the transmission to reach the other APC as well.

"Something doesn't look right here. Hold back a little and be ready in case this goes south. I'll keep the comm open so that you hear what goes on."

"You think it's Locust?" Baird, not Dom.

"Nah. Stranded are all here...something just doesn't feel right about this. Could be nothing."

"Hey, they're probably just all intimidated by the badass COG APC."

"Just be ready Baird. Dom, stay in the turret. Don't open fire unless I say." Marcus shut the APC down and cracked the hatch. He stepped out into the open air, and started walking towards the group. He caught the eye of the man they'd interviewed yesterday as he did.

"Hey. It's Stannis, right? How are things?"

Stannis opened his mouth and then closed it again, looking uncertain. None of the other Stranded were moving at all. One of the children even began to cry. Everything looked wrong. Marcus' right hand was going for his Lancer when a Stranded he knew stepped out of the crowd, gun raised.

"Oh. Franklin."

"Hey there man. Never found out your name, y'know. You the leader then? Not Dom?"

Marcus tilted his head. "That's right."

"Cool man, we can deal then." Franklin waved his hand at the refugees. "These guys, you know, they got nothing for us. Down to the dregs round here. No ammo, not even any food—they're down to cockroaches down here, you hear that? Fuckin' _cockroaches_, man. We don't want any of that shit."

"Yeah. Tough for them, ain't it." On the other side of the line, he heard Baird. _"Franklin? The fuck's he doing here?"_ "This a hostage exchange, kind of thing?" Marcus asked, just for Baird's sake. He heard Baird swear, and knew the message had got through.

Franklin glanced back at the refugees, then at Marcus, and then made his face into an exaggerated caricature of amazement. "Damn, you went through COG school and everything, didn't you?" No laughter, Marcus noted. No one else was gloating. The rest of the henchmen were probably up in the buildings rather than down here with Franklin. Good to know. Franklin sobered his expression back up. "Yeah, asshole, that's right. Yeah, this is that kind of thing. These worn-out fuckers—" He waved his hand at the group—"for all your rations. And your Lancers." He barked a laugh. "Oh, that's right, I went there! I want your Lancers, too."

In a tinny little voice in his ear, Baird was saying something. Not to him. _"Yeah, confirm ambush. All of the forty VIPs are hostages. Time check is, uh, 1330. What's the ETA for the birds, then?"_

Marcus nodded, trying to consider the best way to stall him. "Sure. But I think I can give you a better deal if you let me. How many guys do you have hiding around here?"

_ "Damn, that fast huh? All right, we'll be ready. Listen, we've got the leader down in negotiations, and I'd say the remainder are in sniper points on the surrounding buildings. You probably can't get visual. Recommend an IR scan."_

"Oh, yeah? COG pigs can one-up me? I wanna hear this. Whatcha got for me piggy?"

Marcus tried to look indecisive, as if he was having trouble getting the words out. In truth he was actually starting to have trouble keeping a straight face. "I don't know how much they told you, but this is a rescue op. We find Stranded, we take them to Jacinto."

"Uh huh. So what?"

_ "Hey, Marcus. Keep him talking. ETA for the Ravens is one minute, tops."_

"_So_," said Marcus, burlesquing his accent, "we can take you guys with us."

Franklin stared at him silently for what seemed like a long time, probably thinking he was kidding. Then he burst out laughing, barely remembering to keep his aim straight. "Oh, for fuck's sake man! That is rich! That is fucking rich!"

_ "Forty seconds. Anyone in the buildings is ashes. You going to take Franklin out, then?"_

"Yeah," Marcus muttered, then continued on loud enough for Franklin to hear him. "What's the problem? You'll get everything you want at Jacinto. Rations, Lancers, girls, whatever. Full stock out there."

_ "Man, if Anya could hear you right now she'd be _so _pissed."_

"Maybe. But I say I got all I want here man. What do I wanna be a fucking shit-for-brains COG asshole like you for anyway?"

_ "Hey. Twenty seconds to go. Be ready, now."_

"Well." Marcus decided to play the 'stupid Gear' card to the hilt, and took Franklin's question utterly seriously. "Great pay, for one thing."

"Are you fucking kidding me about this shit?!"

"Equipment's top notch, too. Government standards, you know." Marcus began to tick his fingers off for each point. "Life expectancy's pretty good, too."

"Bullshit." And, underneath Franklin's derision, Marcus could hear the distinctive roar that sounded like something tearing, the sound every Gear out on ops learned to associate with the successful end of a mission.

_ "Hey. Choppers are here."_

Marcus grinned suddenly, breaking character, and shrugged. "Well. Better than yours, I guess."

Franklin didn't seem to be listening to him anymore. His gaze had raised to a point several hundred meters behind and above Marcus' head, and focused on the lean gunmetal silhouettes on the horizon that lingered there like shadowy death.

"Oh, shit," was all Franklin managed, and then all of the sound in the world came together and tried to tear Marcus' eardrums out of his skull. In his peripheral vision he saw missile contrails flickering over his head as he began to charge.

Marcus tackled Franklin and beat the gun out of his hand, just as the world caved in around them in dust and noise.

He arose whole seconds later, shaking his head in a futile effort to dislodge the ringing. Franklin stayed prone on the ground, coughing a little. He didn't try to fight back any more. He knew it was all over.

The buildings were just gone. The Raven air-to-ground missiles had done their job with brutal precision, and Marcus couldn't see any recognizable pieces left over. He doubted anything left over from the blast was wider than the span of his hand.

"Everybody stay calm!" Baird's voice. The Gear had apparently driven in while the missiles were flying and was walking towards the group. Dom and Cole were covering the area, turrets slowly combing back and forth across the smashed landscape. For all his bluster, Baird had good initiative, Marcus decided. He had taken charge impressively quickly. "Any wounded? No? Good. Let's all get into the choppers quick just in case there're any snipers left around, then."

"Nice job," Marcus told him.

"Uh huh. Fun, too." Baird gestured at Franklin. "You wanted him alive?"

Marcus nodded. "He might know if there are other raiders out there. And he knows we'll kill him if we can't get anything useful out of him. Figured it was worth a shot. If not, well, we've got plenty of bullets here."

"Yeah. Nice job."

Franklin appeared to have gotten the last of the dust out of his lungs. "Shit, wait man, you don't have to kill me. I got some intel for you, man!"

Marcus chuckled a little at that. "Good. Better start talking then before one of us gets impatient, kills you anyway. Hey, Dom, you want in on this?"

"Sure," said Dom, sounding quite serious. "If anyone gets to kill him, it's going to be me."

"Hey, Franklin, Dom just called dibs on putting you out of your misery. Guess you two ran out of favors, huh." Marcus nudged Franklin with his boot. "Go on now. Life's on the line here."

Frankin rolled onto his back, and to Marcus' utter surprise began to laugh a little. Blood was trickling out of his mouth and down over his neck. "No trouble man. It's that good."

"This I gotta hear," said Dom from his vantage point in the APC turret. "I'm coming down. If he starts talking before I get there, kick him until he shuts up again."

Franklin was ominously silent as Dom strode out across the square and joined Baird and Marcus. He acknowledged Franklin with a nod when he got there. Franklin nodded back, and then the atmosphere between the two of them chilled. Dom pulled out his pistol and casually pulled off the safety. "You know, the last time we met up, you said we weren't passing favors anymore."

"Hey, come on man. Don't be like that." Franklin's grin was blood-stained. Not a lot of people took a direct tackle from a fully-armored Gear and came out unscathed. "One more, huh? Just for old times?"

Dom shrugged. "We aren't letting you go, I'll say that for free. But if you tell us something good, and we really like it, we'll pack you in with the others, take you to Jacinto."

Franklin's eyes widened a little, and he glanced over at Marcus. "Damn, you weren't kidding then."

"No, I was. I figure you don't have shit to tell us."

"Ah ah ah." Franklin raised his arm and waggled his index finger at Marcus admonishingly. "Never say die, huh?" He turned to Dom. "Listen man, you ain't going to believe me about this, but I swear to God I ain't kidding. 'Kay?"

Dom leaned forward, suddenly curious. "Try me."

"Swear. Swear I get to go to Jacinto."

Dom rolled his eyes. "Just fucking tell me already."

Franklin said, "Marcia. She's alive man."

Marcus watched as several emotions seemed to boil through Dom. First futile hope, which quickly segued into taut anger at being played so easily, and then finally graduating into contempt.

"Who's Marcia?" asked Baird, just as Dom pointed the gun at Franklin's temple. The other man yelped. "Wait, you can ask the others! Stannis' group, man! We all came here to try and barter for some ammo, we didn't know they didn't have none, and she was here too!" Franklin was babbling. "Blonde hair, pretty as hell, just like you said! Come on! It was her! That's good enough for me to live, right? Put the gun down?"

Dom was deep in thought, staring at a point somewhere in the distance. Franklin swallowed. "Come on, now. Swear it. Swear you're taking me to—"

"Fine," said Marcus, mostly to shut him up. He put a hand on Dom's shoulder to get his attention. Dom didn't respond. "Guess you'd better talk to Stannis," Marcus tried. It seemed to work. Dom shook himself out of it.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll just..." He trailed off as he headed for where Stannis was in line for one of the Ravens. Marcus watched Dom walk over, ask a question. Stannis began to nod.

"I don't get it, though," Baird said. "Marcia? Who the fuck is Marcia?"


	6. Gray Area

"Stannis? Hoy, Stannis!"

Stannis turned at the sound of Dom's voice. Beside him one of the COG pilots swore and muttered something about Locust anti-air "getting here any second now, can't spare any more time", but he ignored it. He owed Dom for all this. "What is it?"

Dom halted in front of him, breathing a shade quick from the run over to the copter. For half a second he didn't seem able to say anything while Stannis and the COG pilot stared at him. He was pulling the photo that Stannis remembered seeing the last time that he'd come by out of his pocket while he began talking.

"Did you—Marcia, did you ever—"

Stannis waved off the photo Dom was trying to give him and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, just yesterday. She came in and bartered for some ammo. Asked some of the same questions you guys did, I heard. I wasn't around at the time so I didn't run into her, and she was gone before I found out she was around. Sorry."

Dom looked crushed. "But... shit, did she tell you where she was going or—"

"No, nobody even asked. She was walking out around the time that Franklin walked in. They tried to mess with her and she punched Franklin right out." Stannis grinned at the memory. "I think that's why they let her go. Franklin looked pissed, for one thing. I'm surprised they even told you she was around."

"He was under duress." Dom stepped back to let the COG pilot usher Stannis on board. Stannis put one foot on the copter floor, and then turned back around, much to the chagrin of the pilot. "Hey, don't give up just yet, man. She's on foot, right? Can't have gone far." He pulled himself up into the copter, sat down, and buckled himself in with a seatbelt that, after fourteen years, he was so unfamiliar with he couldn't even remember the last time he used one. He was the last man to load, and as soon as he was finished he felt a slight pull on his stomach as it lifted off.

"Thanks," Dom shouted up at the copter. The disappointment was still etched onto Dom's face when Stannis looked back, seconds later. He watched as the Gear dwindled away into the distance.

"She's your _what_?"

Dom sighed, irritated. "My wife, dickwad. She's my wife."

"You married a _Stranded_?"

"Oh, for—Goddammit Baird, I married her fifteen years ago, before all this bullshit started."

"Oh." There was silence on the radios as Baird thought this through. Then, grudgingly, "Well, okay. Sorry. I'm all right with that."

"Glad we've got your fucking blessing now, asshole."

"Can it," said Marcus, and both of them shut up. The Gears were silent for the rest of the trip, watching the surroundings with intense focus for the Locust ambush they all expected. All except Marcus, anyway. He hadn't told the others, but the Locust were concentrated at the ambush point they'd set up on the convoy route. The previous assault against the convoy had been expected to be a quick victory achieved by sudden, overwhelming force, and as a result the vast majority of Locust in the area were now lying under several hundred tonnes of collapsed building. The reserves only had about enough to man the ambush point and in the knowledge that the convoy would be around soon enough anyway, they had neglected to send out any scouts.

It was a good day to be in Delta.

The APCs trundled on, the dying sun turning the skies into a dim orange. Marcus flipped on the tank's lights, feeling somewhat happy just to have shelter from the marauding swarms of Kryll that would be fast approaching. In the grudging silence between Dom and Baird that followed, Marcus' mind began to wander, searching for distractions. Feeling only slight trepidation at the idea, Marcus allowed his mind to sink into the Locust Hive Queen's once again. She hadn't noticed him the other times he had done it, he told himself, and the only time she'd seemed to notice him was while he was asleep and dreaming. Anyway, it wasn't like the meld was hard to do—it felt less like he was tensing up or pushing himself into something than it did... just letting go, and allowing himself to fall backwards off the precipice.

He checked back on the Locust ambush again, and found to his great satisfaction that they'd gone to ground and abandoned the idea of an ambush entirely in the face of the oncoming night. He moved into their minds to check their path—

_Floating. Darkness. Smaller minds that skittered around his like insects as he peeled them back, layer by layer, searching for the shades of thought that he knew he would recognize. The whole, one being that was the Locust writhed around him, the Hive Queen's thoughts pumping through all of it like blood through a heart. _

— just to make sure that the Grubs weren't headed towards them or the convoy, and found that they were not. Marcus noted the tunnels the group used to retreat, and the locations of the hole's entrances, and withdrew, finished.

_He swam back up towards the light, even as the current ran hard back down towards the depths where 'They' resided.He could still hear their chatter, but he knew with some relief that none of it was coming towards him; Her eye had not found him again yet. He dragged himself up into the still, quiet place where nothing stirred but him and surfaced._

Sergeant Marcus Fenix blinked and rubbed at his temple. He vividly remembered driving the APC for the last couple blocks, and yet at the same time he could remember being somewhere else. Somewhere... alien. He tried to concentrate, to remember what the experience had been like, but just like the other times the memory was already fading into something resembling a dream.

"Shit," said Marcus. It got more intense every time. He thought back to the early morning 12 hours prior, back on 'Betsy'. The concerns Dom had voiced over the consequences of what he was doing, and of his own flippant responses. _Worth it if we save some lives_?

What was that worth? How many people was he willing to sacrifice his mind for? Sacrifice _himself_ for?

And yet at the same time he found that all of the fear of the possible consequences he could summon up were still pathetically dwarfed at the rush he felt when he thought of letting himself go down the road into the Locust hive mind again. It was like a drug, like an addiction.

He'd have to watch out for this.

Dizzy was sitting on the deck leaning his head against a support strut belonging to one of Betsy's cranes when he saw the returning APCs. First came the glare of the headlights, bright enough to blind in the early night, lighting up the thoroughfare where Betsy was parked. Some of the lampposts lining the street had become temporary roosts for the Kryll, and where it touched them they shrieked and flapped, fleeing for somewhere darker. Dizzy watched as a host of them made for the skies, fluttering over the APCs and then up into the distance. He got up, being careful to stay in the light, and walked across Betsy's deck to the driving systems in the prow.

The comm set the Gears had given him spoke up, irritated. "We're back, Dizzy. Light us up already."

"Keep your gorramn shirt on, boy. I'm workin' on it." To assuage some of the fear about the Kryll, Dizzy and company had installed scrounged lighting all over Betsy, mostly on the ladder and the deck. He turned it all on now with a flip of a couple switches, and had to shut his eyes for a couple seconds to get used to the light. It ate up Betsy's battery pack, but it came in handy.

Some of the Kryll were roosting on Betsy's hull, and they didn't seem to like it much. After the angry screeching had died down, the comm set said, "All right. We're coming up."

It took about thirty seconds, and a good 10 of Betsy's battery life, for the Gears to pull themselves up the ladder and find the stairs down into Betsy's passenger deck. Baird was the last to come up, and Dizzy followed him downstairs after he shut the lights back off behind him. "Good hunting?" Dizzy asked Baird. He paused on the stairwell long enough to snag the egress hatch to the upper deck shut behind him, and then turn off the light that had been keeping the stairwell entrance well lit. They were now sealed in. The five of them walked down into the passenger deck, and—Dizzy had to give them credit for this—the conversation in the group of sixty only flatlined for under a second while everyone glanced over at the COGs, and then immediately started up again. They were getting used to the idea of having Gears around quick.

"Ah. Hell of a story, that." Baird shrugged. "You got any beer around here?"

"Eh, what we can scrounge. Whiskey, mostly."

"I could use some of that," said Cole. They stopped for a moment while two children ran in front of them, laughing and playing. "I mean, if it's cool with you, sir."

Marcus shrugged. "If Dizzy can spare it, drinks for the whole squad."

"All right!"

"Just one each. Don't make me regret this."

Cole grinned merrily. "Yes, _sir._"

There was a group of Stranded clustered together talking near the entrance. Pages of what looked like inventories of the convoy's resources were scattered across a solid oak table in the center of the group. One of them, a raven-haired woman with a heavy tan, looked up.

"Dizzy? We all thought you'd never come off shift."

"Oh, hey baby." Dizzy gestured at Delta. "Seemed like these fellas 'd never arrive, either." Dizzy's wife didn't move away from the table, but she nodded at them politely.

"How y'all doing. Got everything you need?"

Marcus nodded.

"Alright. Wouldn't dream of keeping you." The conversation finished, she turned back to the table. As they walked off, Marcus heard: "So we're good for ammo. How's the rations going? I heard we found some shite, back near Fourth Street—"

Dizzy seemed to have lightened up a little as they walked away. "Hell of a woman," he said.

"Uh huh."

Dizzy led them through the deck, towards one of the corners in the back of the room. The deck had begun life as a series of bunking rooms one large area for ore storage. It had taken Dizzy's family some time, but they'd managed to shovel all of the ore out of the storage and clean out the soot, leaving behind a large room about sixty feet by forty feet. At first there probably hadn't been much use for it, but as time progressed and the number of refugees grew, the sides and corners became dominated by bedrolls from the refugees. Much of the center was left open to walk around in, save for various tables and couches salvaged from the cities the truck had passed through and taken by the Stranded like souvenirs. It wasn't the only things they'd taken, either—apparently, more than one of the refugees had taken to collecting old bits of memorabilia and leaving it on the center table like an altar to the past. There were bits of statues, books, even a functional computer. Marcus noticed one of the statue heads in particular, of an aged Gear with his hair combed back and his face drawn into a dour scowl. There were lines that looked as if even the real face had had them carved in. The glare half-convinced the viewer that the man was painting a targeting reticle over their face. The likeness was unmistakeable.

The statue had been of his father.

Marcus glanced around at the others, but it seemed as if nobody else had noticed yet. He endeavoured not to look at the statue. They walked on.

Dizzy led them to the rear of the room, over to the corner on the left side. Next to an exit to one of the bunkrooms was a table with a few chairs, and a battered-looking drinks cabinet. With ceremonial solemnity, he pulled out five shot glasses, impressively unscarred, and an old crystalline bottle. Amber liquid danced inside. Dizzy gestured at it. "Kagorville scotch," he said.

Cole whistled. "Shit, Dizzy, where did you get this stuff?"

"Hey, we get around."

"Shit, boy, don't drink it so fast."

The Gear across the table leaned his head back and gulped the drink down anyway, and when he lowered his gaze to glance at Dizzy it seemed eerily like he had only just noticed Dizzy was even there. Dizzy could see the man even stiffen a little in surprise. Then he got himself under control again, untensed, and shrugged.

"Sorry." He reached out for the bottle again, but this time Dizzy pulled it back, leaving the man with his hand outstretched across the table. "You crazy, boy?" Dizzy asked him. "I've seen men a foot taller drink that much and keel over. You ain't going to take much more, you'll need your wits in the morning too. We all will."

It was about half an hour later. Baird and Cole had both had one shot glass each and left. Cole had looked like he'd wanted to take down at least one more, but Marcus had glanced over and made eye contact with him before he'd asked for another and Cole had taken the hint. But for all that, Marcus hadn't seemed to want to try the same trick with the last Gear. He'd waited politely while the man calmly drained two shot glasses without showing any sign of stopping, and then walked off without pressing the issue.

Dizzy shook his head. "I ain't never heard of a drunk Gear, boy. Don't change that."

He'd had this kind of talk before. There were plenty of Stranded he'd met that drank to forget, and sometimes even drank to die. He knew what was supposed to come next—either an impassioned plea for just one more, or a scrap. But to Dizzy's surprise, he got neither. He got nothing. The other man didn't even move for about half a second, and then he started laughing. To Dizzy, it sounded forced and bitter.

"That's because you can't get a drunk Gear, Dizzy," the man said. "Us Gears, we're tougher than normal humans. We process toxins so fast, there isn't time for the alcohol to _get _us drunk. There's not even a hangover after." He turned the shot glass in his hand. "If you're fast enough and a lightweight—if you were before, anyway—sometimes you can get a buzz. It lasts about a second or so."

Dizzy whistled. "That so."

The Gear kept talking, as if Dizzy hadn't spoken. His eyes never left the glass in his hand. "It's like that with everything. All the stuff you learned to be afraid of before they changed you. I got shot, once, when I was 15. Spent over a month in hospital before I could walk again. 'Bout a week back, we ran into some Locust. Close quarters. I got careless, one put a handgun right up against my rib, right _here_—" He pointed at a spot in his side—"and pulled the trigger. It went through the chestplate, through me, and out the other side. It got an artery on the way through. Now, I know I was bleeding while I took out the Grub, but by the time I actually got around to looking at it, it had already scabbed over. By the time I got back to the APC and patched the armor, it wasn't even there." He shook his head. "Feels like a dream, sometimes."

Dizzy shrugged. He didn't want to say much, in case it broke the spell. The Gear hadn't seemed to realize who he was talking to, but it sounded to Dizzy like the kind of venting he'd heard after one of his buddies had watched someone die. If a six-and-a-half-foot killing machine wanted to talk about his feelings, Dizzy wasn't about to stop him. Besides, it was pretty interesting.

"Of course," the Gear said, "that's just for us lucky ones. The guys that they... they made... back in the Pendulum wars. We've got two hearts in case they knock one out, a whole bunch of new glands to regulate aggression... everything they could think of putting in. Couple years back, they started needing soldiers so fast, I figure they just threw safe procedure out the window. They don't tell anybody the statistics, but I know this—when they did this to me, it took them two years. These days, I hear they do it in six months, and there's no _way_ they're getting everything right if they're doing it that fast."

"Who told you that?" Dizzy asked. He almost regretted asking in case the Gear brushed him off and left, but thoughts of his own kids were flashing through his head.

"Kid named Carmine. He's dead now." The Gear reached out for the scotch again, and this time Dizzy let him take it. There wasn't much emotion in the man's voice; he sounded coldly clinical. "He was fresh out of the clinics when I met him. He was a good soldier—quick thinker, good reflexes, cool under fire. If he'd lasted long enough to learn he could have been a Sergeant. As things went? He lasted about five months. He turned nineteen just before he died." He shook his head. "It's bullshit, you know? He didn't last as long as it took to train him. He was just a kid."

Dizzy nodded, unable as usual to think of anything to say at times like this. The silence stretched. Dizzy fell back to a conversational gambit he hadn't been able to use in a while. In hindsight, it was either exactly the right or wrong thing to say, depending on how long-term a view he took.

"So," said Dizzy, "you got a girl back home?"

The silence kept stretching. The Gear took another swig of the scotch. "Girl back home," he said, meditatively, but there was an edge in his tone. "Let me tell you about that."

He awoke, not sure who he was for a few seconds, hoping it was just sleep that clogged his thoughts. Marcus Fenix waited until he felt fully conscious, and then got up off the bunk.

He must have drowsed off for a few seconds, he decided. He couldn't remember dreaming anything, so it couldn't have been that long. He checked his watch, just to be sure.

He did a doubletake on the time. Half an hour asleep. Couldn't be too bad. He'd read somewhere that it took over an hour for the brain to relax into the state when it dreamed, so maybe he hadn't had a repeat of the night before. He didn't remember anything like that, anyway. Maybe he'd got lucky. Whatever had happened, he needed to piss now. Marcus wandered out in search of a toilet.

Voices. Dom's voice, indistinct, and Dizzy's. _None of my business, _thought Marcus, and then thought, _Fuck it. _He walked back towards the still-lit doorway at the end of the corridor, and stopped when he was close enough to listen in.

"...is out there right now and you're not doing anything about it?"

"Oh yeah?" Dom. "What the hell am I supposed to do about that? Take an APC? That's half your firepower right there. It'll fuck you guys good if I go out and try and rescue one fucking Stranded on my own."

"That's your _wife _you're talking about."

"And this is _desertion _we're talking about. Whether I find her or not, when I come back, Marcus'll kill me. I mean it. He'll have to. COG law."

"So ask him first."

"That won't change the charge. It'll just make him complicit when we get back to Jacinto."

"Well, shit, boy." Pause, possibly as they drank more of the liquor. Dizzy's voice was getting a definite slur in it. _It's as if he's trying to drink down a Gear,_ Marcus thought, and grinned a little despite everything.

"Look," said Dizzy. "You've got about eight hours till the sun comes up. Now, some of the guys we've rescued got here in ve-hicles of their own. One had a car, he mostly put it together hisself. We keep it on the back of the deck, and you can lower it down with the crane. It's got lights so it can run at night, and it's got enough speed for you to cover plenty of ground before morning. Keys are already in it."

"And you'll be fine with me taking it?"

"I can't say I'd be fine with you staying here while your missus is out wandering on a night like this, boy. Go on."

Marcus listened to the sound of Dom striding away towards the egress. He listened to the sound of Dizzy going to bed. Then he slunk across the room and followed Dom up onto the deck.

Dom found the light switches with relative ease, and it was only a few seconds worth of work to find the car. Dom looked it over for a little while.

It certainly wasn't one of the tank-like behemoths he'd gotten used to using. It was based mostly off one of those old civilian transports from before everything had gone wrong, all compact comfort instead of military efficiency. If there was supposed to be a roof, it was missing. All that was left was a frame made out of steel tubing welded precariously onto the original bodywork, with whatever lighting the Stranded had been able to find intact strung up over it. Ditto with the hood; the only thing left covering the engine from the elements was a tarp. Best of all, it was a manual transmission instead of automatic, and Dom had never had to learn how to drive one of those.

Nobody would miss it, anyway.

Dom didn't know how to operate the crane, so while the deck lights were still on, he got some rope out and lowered it by hand. He clambered down the ladder, and by the time he'd gotten to the car and turned on the lights, the deck had faded into the black again. Dom hoped that it was because Dizzy or one of the Stranded on shift had turned it off and not because that Betsy was out of batteries. Too late to think about that now. He keyed the ignition and felt the car rev to life under him. He was ready to floor it before he suddenly realized that a man stood framed by the headlights directly in front of him.

"Oh. Marcus."

Marcus nodded at him. "They'll kill you for doing this, Dom."

"If I get caught, they will." Dom decided he might have to kill Marcus, and felt a rising tide of apprehension and horror at the idea. Hopefully he'd be able to do it, though. The alternative was worse. "Get out of the way."

Marcus shook his head. "No. Get out of the driver's seat, Dom."

"_Why the fuck should I?!_"

Marcus had kept his features stony until Dom said that, but then a smile began to tug at a corner of his mouth. "Come on, Dom. You can't drive stick worth shit, remember? Get out of the driver's seat. I'll do it."

"Oh." Dom obliged, and Marcus slid in beside him. Under his expertise, the motor's revving became a rising howl as the car accelerated down the ruined street and away towards Stannis' old settlement.

"I've got one question, though," said Dom, after they'd gone a couple blocks. "Did you turn off the lights?"

"Uh huh."

"How'd you get down after me?"

Marcus' answer took another half a block. "I just thought about it," he said softly, "and they got out of my way."


	7. Call of the God

The ruin that Stannis had lived in for over a decade was all shadows after nightfall. Without human light to scare them away, Kryll roosted on every possible surface and left deposits on the floor beneath, leaving a pattern that looked almost like the trail of some huge beast that had wandered about. They watched him as he slunk past them, cold black multifaceted compound jewels of eyes that gleamed just enough for him to make them out. Normally he did not rove anywhere near close enough to make out such detail—any Grub that did was devoured instantly as the Kryll obeyed whatever mindless hunger the All-Mother had instilled in them. But tonight, the Kryll did not disturb him, for Her voice was in their minds, ordering them to be tranquil, as much as it was in his.

_Closer, closer. Now hide. _

He obeyed the All-Mother instantly, and hunkered down in the dust and debris. His mottled hide blended in well enough that he could not have been seen in daylight. As he felt Her satisfaction, his eyesight began to alter, and sounds that were until seconds ago barely audible now came crystal clear. She was making Her presence felt.

Hours passed.

He heard them first—a throaty roar that shook his whole body and was loud enough in his newly-refined ears to be painful. Then a growing brightness on a wall ahead of him swivelled suddenly, turning directly into his sight. It was dazzling enough to be blinding. He did not move, just as he had been told, but even so his lip began to curl into a sneer. She stopped even that, coaxing him into complete stillness.

_Silent, still. They must not see._

And so he gulped his boiling hatred back down and waited. Steady thunks began to reverberate through the ground—footsteps of surfacers. As the steps came steadily closer, he even began to discern their speech. With the All-Mother in the shadows of his mind, comprehension dawned.

"I don't see anything. You sure this is the place?"

"Not a lot of other places to start, man. She left by the main entrance, and—" as the surfacer gestured, a blinding light swung back and forth, scouring the ground—"that tunnel there is the main entrance. Only entrance, really. Wherever she went, she started here. See any tracks?"

"Dom, I can't see anything the way you're swinging that fucking flashlight around. Either go back and forth along the path or turn it off; right now you're just making my night vision shit and not getting anything done anyway."

The flashlight continued swinging for another couple seconds. For a moment it even settled on him. He shut his eyes and waited for the dreadful heat it made of his forehead to recede.

It went away, and he opened his eyes again. It had now settled on a narrow bead of flattened ground several metres away.

"Sorry. Thought I saw something." The light beam changed angles, and drew away into the darkness until it was nearly indistinguishable. "On the bright side, it looks like everything around here's been levelled. There's only one route with cover, so everyone leaving the Strandeds goes the same way. Down that city block, then cutting along an avenue and going through another block of cover, and on and on until you leave the city. Even then you'd need to sprint over the open areas, and you could only stay in some very specific buildings at night. Let's go along the route until we find something."

"Sure, Dom. It's your game."

"Yeah, about that. I've been thinking. Can you get into the Locusts' heads again?"

"Why?"

"If Marcia's in trouble, it's the only way we'd know for sure."

While the silence was descended on them all, he felt a strange dichotomy of feelings. There was fear and apprehension, cold as metal and death, radiating out from one of the surfacers and resonating in his own mind. For a moment he almost felt as if he was near another Grub. And yet at the exact same time, the All-Mother filled him with a thrill of anticipation.

It made him almost want to cut himself in two, and he was happy to find it receded rather quickly.

"Not yet. We've got hours to search and I don't want to do that if I don't have to."

"That's... fair enough, man. Listen, thanks for doing this with me."

"No problem, Dom. I probably owe you for something anyway."

The roar began again, and after a few moments it was gone again. He rose after the All-Mother was sure it was gone, and felt a savage grin tear itself across his face. Teeth glinted.

He had done well. The All-Mother was pleased.

_The others will follow them for now. Be ready. And if you do engage them, be sure to leave the-one-that-sings alive._

The night went by in a slow, thorough search of the buildings, one by one. Empty of Locusts and Stranded alike, it didn`t take them long to finish the first block of buildings. Then the second. Then the third.

The fourth went by in what was becoming a progressively more dour atmosphere between the two Gears, mostly to mask Dom's growing despair. They were nearly getting back into the car after the fourth building search when Dom murmured, "Marcus. Don't turn around, but we've got Locust."

"Where? I don't...feel... them."

"They're right behind us. At least one. I saw movement for a second when I turned, I know they're there. People don't move like that." Dom gestured for them to move back to the car. "What do you mean, you can't feel them?"

"I mean I can't feel them, Dom. It's like they're not there. You sure."

"Yeah, man. They were Locust all right." Dom patted him on the back as they got into the car. "You'd better get your head straight. By the look of it we're going to be in the thick of it soon."

"I'll be fine."

As they drove away, Marcus concentrated, trying to regain his sensations of the Locust. But as hard as he pushed, he couldn't feel a thing. Maybe Dom had been wrong.

They found a trail sign in the next block.

It was blood.

Streaks of it decorated a lonely space of cover behind a ruined car, Locust bullets and shell casings littered across and through the old machine like confetti. Someone had been in a gunfight with more than a few Locust, and either lost or barely tied. Dom got out of the car the moment Marcus had stopped and ran over to it, getting down on his knees to study the pattern. Marcus got out a little slower. His head was beginning to hurt a little.

"What the hell, Dom. You mind watching out for the Locust before you break cover like that?"

Dom shrugged. "Dunno why they're trailing us, but they're trailing, not attacking. Probably wondering what the hell we're doing out here." He pointed at the blood. "Look. She wasn't killed, man. If she'd fallen, there'd be a lot more blood, and it'd be puddle-shaped. Not to mention if they'd dragged her away. She got glanced, and she got away. But she won't have gotten far." He pointed to the nearest building.

"She? Dom, this is just blood. Could be anyone's. You don't know it's Marcia."

Dom turned to look at him. "It's all we've got to go on."

Marcus held the other man's gaze for several long seconds, and then shrugged. "Fine. Fine, it's your game. We were going to check this building anyway." Dom carried on staring at him.

"What?" asked Marcus.

"Do you know you're bleeding?"

Marcus raised his hand to his nose, and felt warm, sticky wetness beneath his finger. "Oh. Nah, my whole head feels like someone's taking a hammer to it right now. Probably the alcohol."

"Shit, man, you barely had any and last I checked you weren't exactly a lightweight." Dom glanced around, concerned. "Listen, you know I hate to say this but it's looking like we're not going to find her out here. Let's check out this building and get back to the convoy."

_Get them. _

To Marcus, everything began to slow down.

He heard gutteral Locust shouts from down the street, and then more from the buildings around them. Bullets sang through the air between him and Dom, and he felt a dim pain as one struck his shoulder.

Shouting from Dom. Marcus saw grimaces of pain across Dom's face as he too was hit, but Marcus found it hard to care. The pain, the noise...everything seemed to belong to someone else, far away.

_You're mine._

Something cold and dark from the depths of Marcus' mind rose up and pulled him under.

"Marcus, we gotta go! Marcus!"

Marcus did not respond. His eyes were glassy.

"_Goddammit, Marcus, come on!"_

Another bullet hit Dom, and he felt sheer razor-edged pain before his augmented nervous system shut it down.

He had to get out of here. Had to get to Marcia. Had to trust Marcus to follow him. Dom sprinted across the street and into the building he'd suspected Marcia was in, diving through the front window. The glass had long ago shattered, and he hit the ground on his left forearm and rolled. There was a Locust inside waiting for him, but he got the Lancer up and had it gutted before it had time to even snarl. He looked back for Marcus.

Marcus was still standing in the middle of the street, and Dom realized the Locusts weren't firing anymore.

_Oh, shit. They were aiming for me. _

He watched as a few clambered out from the building across the street, and more came up the street, guns holstered, faces curious instead of snarling.

Claiming one of their own.

_Shit shit shit. _Dom pulled out his pistol, pulled off the safety, and drew a bead on his friend's head. Marcus was fourteen feet away, an easy mark. All he had to do was take the shot.

Dom looked into his friend's eyes, pulled the trigger, and found that he couldn't.

"_I need a favor. If this starts getting bad, if you think this is driving me nuts like it did for the other inmates, or if it starts seeming like the Locust are in my head instead of the other way around and they're influencing my decisions... Dom, I'll need you to shoot me."_

_Dom nodded, believing he understood. "Shoot to wound, chain you to a bulkhead and drag you to Jacinto?"_

"_No, Dom. Shoot to kill. Here." Marcus made his right hand into the shape of a gun and put it against his temple. "Don't fuck around. I'm a Sergeant, I know what the higher-ups look like, I command a Gear squad, I could lead them to this convoy. The stakes are too high. Fire until you see brains.''_

"_Shit, man...I..."_

"_That was an order, Dom. Can you carry it out?"_

"_God help you, man... Yeah. Yeah. I'll fucking do it."_

He tried again, and again his finger refused to move. The Locust were all around Marcus now. One turned to look at him, the expression on its face strangely curious, and pointed. Several Grubs broke away from the group, and loped towards him.

''Shit,'' managed Dom, and ran for it.


	8. Viral Strike

Dark.

Marcus found it hard to make any more concrete a judgment than that. The world was compact around him, utterly black and silent, like he'd been packed into a coffin. It seemed to be exerting a strange pressure on his brain, a continual and ceaseless inwards-pushing into the depths of his brain.

Despite it all, Marcus managed a few cogent thoughts. _I'm not dead, _he managed, saying the words over and over into the abyss around him. _I am not dead. My name is Marcus Fenix. I am a soldier of the COG. I'm not dead yet. _

And the abyss whispered back, _I know. _

Elsewhere, Dominic Santiago felt the Lancer's chainsaw slowly rev to a stop, until the only sound left was the ringing in his ears. The grub beneath him stirred a little, one hand inching towards the massive diagonal wound across its chest, and then it stopped moving forever. Dom gave the Lancer a tug, felt the saw's teeth snag on the ribs, and planted his foot on the dead grub. He pulled again, this time with the muscles in his chest and legs, and only then did the teeth finally give way. The force of the pull sent him sprawling backwards in a heap, and he swore as he hit the ground. He'd taken more than a couple hits in his back in the melee—surrounded by the three Locust that had pursued him, he'd had no choice—and something felt very definitely wrong near his lower spine.

Well, it wasn't like he had any kind of first aid equipment on him. No use checking it now. Dom Santiago pulled himself into a sitting position, tried to stand, and found he had to use the Lancer as a cane.

It would do. There were more marks of Marcia's trail inside the building, little footprints and scuffmarks where she'd had to have stood. He could find her. He _would. _

He began to drag himself laboriously down the corridor towards a stairwell, paying no attention to the pooling trail of blood behind him.

Marcus' oration slammed to a halt in the face of the realization that an immense alien _something _was sharing the silent space with him. He stopped even trying to think, in case it drew Her attention back to him, but in the back of his mind he wondered if this was a nightmare. The entire situation had a strangely dreamlike quality to it, and even his own mind felt slippery whenever he tried to focus. Then She spoke again.

_In a manner of speaking, this is a dream, yes. Your brainwave patterns are more responsive to Me in a certain stage of sleep. _

Some of Marcus' education came back to him. _REM?_

_Possibly. _There was an odd sensation in the back of his head that was vivid and tactile. _Yes, judging by your memories I would believe so. _

Despite the terror, Marcus suddenly felt the familiar feeling of rage rise up, unshackled again. _You stay the FUCK out of my head—_

_Your choice in these matters has long past. _The Queen's voice became derisive._ Fool. Did you really think you could hide from me? I am not some bloated broodmare hiding in the depths of the earth as you seem to assume. I _am _the Locust. Every one of us are my hands, my senses... my children. How could you think to hide from me inside my own mind, my own body, like a virus? The time would come when you would be exposed, and you had to have known that all along. _

_I did, _Marcus managed to say underneath the psychic barrage of disgust and revulsion the queen was projecting. _But it doesn't matter. I managed it long enough. _

_Oh, yes. Your companions. That... _The Queen searched Marcus' mind for the proper word/concept for a moment. _That 'convoy'. Immaterial to me in the long term. You posed far more of a threat in your own insidious way, and if you had stopped to think instead of surrenduring to your inferior simian instincts you would have realized that. What is the worth of a few more humans? It is like hunting the cells of my enemy instead of my enemy himself. The destruction of your civilisation is what concerns me. Without it, you are merely animals again. _

Marcus thought this over. _You're wrong,_ he said finally. The rage and panic had been replaced with a strange feeling of cold analysis inside him, as if he was having a philosophical discussion with his father again.

_Oh?_

_Civilisation is a complex system of laws and barriers which can define much of human interaction, but they're only tribal understandings that have been formalised and rendered permanent. We define them, _they _don't define _us. _If our civilisation was wiped out but humans weren't, we could just rebuild. I'm betting you couldn't, though. The hive hierarchy in Locust society has biased your judgment. _

_No, _the Queen said stonily. Marcus could feel her irritation building. Maybe he could use that.

_You want to say you know better than me? You fucking alien bitch, just fit this into whatever you call your head: I'm human. You're not. We're not animals like your children are whenever you lose control of them. Every one of us can think like you can. We're not animals. You are._

A brief pause. Marcus used the respite to try to gather his thoughts.

_You do not appear to be bluffing, so I suppose you must be correct, _the Queen said finally. _But then, it appears I may be doing your kind a favor. Consider:_

_If the Locust had not emerged, do you know what would have happened, Marcus? To you, your family, your entire species? You would have destroyed yourselves. Your individuality is a flaw. First you polluted your environment, nearly fatally, when your kind were unable to reach a consensus on how to curtail your own greed. Then, when you finally found a resource capable of sustaining your exponential, uncontrolled growth, your kind killed each other for it. For eighty years. The only reason the war stopped was when your own government threatened the survival of the entire species with a superweapon targeted on all of the other civilisations. Your own father—_

_Stop, _said Marcus suddenly. There was a flow of images along with the words, and he had the feeling the Queen was supplying him with concepts and memories in lieu of human-style communication by signals. And beneath her words he could feel an undercurrent of the Queen's rage. Rage at having to live beside such an intolerable species for so long. Rage at sacrificing her children in order to defeat them. Rage that had festered so long inside her it no longer needed any reason. It was something Marcus could recognise in himself. And it was filling him until he felt he could almost burst. _The mind link, _he managed to think. _Maybe it's hormonally regulated. Emotions, or something._

— _Helped to hasten the demise by perfecting the weapon's control systems. The only time your species has ever been able to work together was when your individuality was removed from you by force—_

_I said STOP. _

_--Killing your species is more an act of mercy than anything else—_

_ENOUGH!_

Marcus' psychic scream of reflected rage and pain echoed back into the Queen. For a second the link between their minds held, and then Marcus felt his mind touch Hers. Images and sensations rolled back and forth between them like tides, and he thought he could feel the Queen howling, caught in her own hatred, and then he felt a searing pain in the back of his head.

Marcus awoke thrashing in an emergence tunnel, weapons gone and six Locust dead around him. A pinhole of light marking the way to the surface. _Morning, _thought Marcus. _Shit, how long was I out?_ The Queen Herself was gone from his mind like a fever dream, and although he felt for it, the link to the Locust he'd almost begun to accept was gone as well.

Well. That left one thing. Marcus got up, and walked off to find Dom.

It wasn't exactly difficult in the end. Marcus walked his way back to where they'd been separated, all the while in blessed silence in the empty streets. He'd only just entered the building Dom had figured Maria had entered when he saw the blood on the floor, and the dead Locust lying around it like supplicants. He followed the trail upstairs, to a room that had passed the years unscathed enough to still have a door. When he pushed it open a little, bullets flew past his face.

"Ah, fuck!" said Marcus, burying himself against the wall. A clip worth of bullets snaked past him until the Lancer's thunderous rattle finished.

"Cease fire! Cease fire already! Dom, it's me!"

Marcus heard the emptied clip hit the ground, but the fire didn't resume. "Marcus? That you?"

"Hey, buddy," said Marcus, and pushed the door open. Dom was lying in a pool of blood, back up against the wall. He was pointing the Lancer at Marcus but his hand was trembling badly.

"I, uh. Fuck." Dom coughed for a while, and restarted. "I didn't find her, Marcus."

"Yeah, I see that." Marcus moved a little closer to where Dom was sitting, mostly to get out of the trajectory of Dom's gun. Dom noticed, and lowered the weapon.

"Sorry, I just..." Dom shook his head. "False trail up here, to lure off grubs while she got away. Girl's fucking _smart._"

"Had to have been, to survive this long." Marcus thought about all of the blood he'd seen leading up to the room, and tried to estimate the size of the pool.

"God, I'm proud of her. But....she doesn't want to be found, then..."

"You'll find her, Dom. You will. If it's the last thing you do." And in his head, Marcus finished the thought with, _If I can even keep you alive for that long._

Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. Dom finished reloading while Marcus made a sort of rummage-around in his head, trying to check everything was the same.

"How'd you get away?" Dom asked.

"Dunno. I guess... I kind of pissed her off. It broke the link we had. I think it hurt her."

Dom grunted happily. "You okay?"

Marcus thought about it. "Dunno. I feel numb, and I've got a headache."

"Could be worse. Lot worse."

"Yeah." Marcus had finished his estimation, not that he'd wanted to think about it. The average Gear weighed about twice as much as the average human for their size, generally around 300 pounds, but the proportion of the weight which was blood was about the same. In general, there was around 12 liters. First aid triage training dictated that Gears that appeared to have lost eight liters or more were to be treated last; odds of surviving such a loss were small even with the many biological upgrades Gears possessed.

His estimation was that Dom had lost around ten liters. Judging by his skin's pallor and the shivering, that was about right.

"Can you walk?" Marcus asked, already knowing the answer.

"I, uh." Dom's concentration on holding his gun wavered and it dropped out of his hands. They both flinched at the sound it made when it hit the ground. "Shit. Don't think so."

"Wound clotted yet?"

"Yep."

"Right," said Marcus. He picked up the gun, found a way to keep it on his armor, and then pulled Dom over his shoulder. "Shit, that's a hell of a scar you're getting out of this, Santiago."

"Yeah," said Dom muzzily. He already sounded half-conscious. "Impress the girls."

Marcus walked out of the building and back to the car, the sun on his face and would have almost felt elated if not for the dying man on his shoulder.

"You're going to be okay," said Marcus. "I fucking _order _you to be okay...``


	9. End Of the Line

**Note: PCGamer had some stuff on GOW2 about Betty and Maria (they got the names wrong). Other than that... sheer dumb luck.**

"Hoy, COG man. Hey? Marcus?"

Sergeant Fenix turned from the constantly-growing view of the last city in the world after a few more seconds had passed, unwillingly. "Hey, Dizzy. You need something?"

The cowboy scratched his head. "I just, uh... I just wanted to thank you for everything you guys've done for us. We'd'a never gotten to Jacinto without you." Another moment passed, died. Finally Dizzy joined Marcus on the deck rail.

"Whatcha looking at, boy?"

The taunt made Marcus smile a little, and he gestured at the empty horizon and the wrecked buildings. "Just enjoying the quiet, Dizzy."

"Yeah. Nice there's plenty to go around now." Dizzy shifted his feet and looked away. "Listen, boy... I'm real sorry 'bout Dom."

Marcus snorted. "Not much to be sorry for, he's had worse. We all have. I hear it was just touch-and-go for the doctors for a little while when the medevac got to the hospital, but he pulled through. He's good at that."

"Yeah, I figured he'd make it, I just..." Dizzy sighed. "Marcus, if it wasn't for me he probably wouldn't have gone out there to start."

Marcus smiled a little. "Dizzy, he found a trail. It gave him hope. That's as much as he needed for now. I figure, so long as he survives, any injury would be worth having something to hope for."

"Bud, that is the fucking truth."

"Something else I wanted to tell you," said Marcus. He turned to look at Dizzy. "It's just a rumor right now, but apparently the COG aren't going to just tear Betsy apart. They want her intact for something big down the road."

Dizzy stared at him, dumbfounded, and then threw his arms around him in a bear hug that probably would have been more effective on a normal human. As it was, Marcus stood there awkwardly, and after a few moments said, "Wuh.. Uh, yeah. Yeah, that's great, yeah. Happy for you, Dizzy." He patted the man on the shoulder a couple times at an attempt to break off the embrace, until Dizzy took the hint.

After Dizzy had left, Marcus resumed his stare of the horizon, gripping white-knuckled on the railing as he tried again and again to open his mind up and listen properly for what he knew he shouldn't be hearing. Finally, in a mixture of excitement and desperation, he shut his eyes.

Nothing. No voice, no images from nearby Locust patrols...nothing.

Probably better like that.

Marcus opened his eyes again, and watched Jacinto approach them instead. Watched and thought about the future, boring down on them at full speed.


End file.
